We get a zoom in on the Daein region for the next few maps. Not that these labels mean anything to most people.
As all fortresses in FE have. Ositia, Arianrhod...
The narration continuing the slightly over-dramatising how historical this war is.
This chapter is titled 託されしもの, which doesn't have a ton of different meaning, but it sorta hints a little more as to the actual meaning. But we'll be getting to that...
Another unnamed location. Kinda strange what does and doesn't count.
Petrine, Naesala, and the generic boss for this mission have a huddle.
Petrine's doing some last minute briefing.
Sucks to be Daein, losing to us. I feel like this is the furthest from their home map a generic boss gets a name for.
Naesala needles Petrine about how Daein had a hand in their own loss.
Petrine is fond of threatening her minions.
But Naesala is no minion, and it falls off his back like water of a duck's back.
...Well, that's not great.
As long as Daein keeps paying Kilvas, Naesala will be happy to help.
And Petrine is happy to pay if it means keeping Naesala around.
Homasa gets a cameo. I think he gets a line, but it clearly wasn't worth screenshotting.
Yeah, I don't think Naesala cares.
...Yeah, just throw that insult out there and expect it to sit. We know we're mercenaries.
And Naesala's not getting paid in advance, which isn't great for us.
Naesala keeps reminding Petrine to pay him. That's probably obnoxious for her.
Yep. Petrine is sure to get out of earshot before she starts badmouthing Naesala, though.
I'd like to see him try. But not on us.
Tanith was definitely the character who made the biggest splash, but I'm not sure that's for her success...
Marcia and Tanith have a normal Support as well as their Bond. It's worth [Atk +0.5, Hit +2.5, Avo +5] per rank.
Marcia, of course, is terrified as hell. Tanith, on top of being very terrifying on a good day, last saw Marcia leaving the Holy Guard.
And is less than pleased.
Marcia would definitely like to be anywhere else right now.
I think one thing that does kind of stand out is that Tanith remembers Marcia. I wonder how much she thinks about the other members of the Holy Guard.
Not sure if Marcia's been avoiding Tanith or is genuinely first seeing her here.
I don't care what Marcia and Tanith's history is. Tanith starts saying this, I look for the nearest five escape routes.
It's worse when it's not yelling. Especially when it's Tanith not yelling.
Tanith really hates that Marcia quit, of course. It was for Makalov, that's a normal reaction.
Is this an order of knights or a mafia family? ...Honestly, those two are basically the same thing anyway.
What were the debt collectors doing that you had to leave in such a hurry? And where was Tanith while this was happening?
Sigrun is like an angel with the Holy Guard. It's probably why half of them are still around and not scared away from Tanith from the word go.
I'm sure this is not what Sigrun was thinking you were going to do. And I'm not sure whether she'd react strongly or just "sighs that's Tanith for you". Sigrun very definitely wears the pants, though.
Marcia decides the time has come to slam the eject button and leave the conversation.
Please do not kill my best unit.
...Only one base conversation? There are actually four of them in Chapter 19, one of which is "unlock access" rather than "lose access". We'll have a look into the rest of that separately.
Mist and Jill are having a nice conversation on the outskirts of camp. Good to know that regardless of Mist's Support level, the two make good friends.
And Mist's got a nice childlike streak again after what happened to her dad.
This is an odd way for Mist to leave the conversation in the context of later on, since it implies that Mist is still making her snow angel while what comes next happens.
That being the sudden appearance of an enemy combatant. Haar, if you don't remember, was the wyvern rider who was hanging around Jill in Chapter 11. I wouldn't call him her superior, but I think there is an implicit level of understanding that Haar's word outranks Jill's in their unit.
Jill is confused why he just walked up. Haar's reputation in the fandom is that he could shrug off our army just fine. This is exaggerated, Mist could probably kill him. Easily, in this game, since the Sonic Sword is Effective on wyverns.
Haar's been looking for Jill. It probably makes him look bad that he lost his boss's daughter in Crimea. Also a sense of personal responsibility for a girl he cares deeply about. In Haar's case, I think the latter.
Haar is surprised that Jill has joined up with the enemy.
Of her own free will.
Jill's a changed woman now, and she's proud to have chosen her side, even if it's not Daein.
Haar's happy to hear that Jill's grown up with us- and also that she's taken to calling the laguz by their proper name.
Haar apparently presented as the type of man that would approve of this even before Jill left.
Haar is very definitely happy to know that Jill is forming her own identity and separating herself from her father.
...But less happy that Jill is going to keep going and come to blows with her father. "General Shiharam" is her dad, which I don't entirely believe has come up in the plot itself.
If Jill comes to fight her dad, she will see things through. Even if she'd rather she didn't.
That makes Jill and Haar enemies.
Haar is off, but he leaves with one last paternal comment for Jill. Some things never change.
I'm not sure where this conversation takes place relative to the opening and duration of the Info conversation. At some point, Mist stopped making her snow angel and came over to find Ike. Of course, the interface isn't equipped to point to when this happened.
She didn't hear enough of the conversation to know that it was largely peaceful, but an enemy soldier walking up to your friend probably makes for a chilling story if you're unclear on the details.
Ike does not think Jill could and/or should fight the Daeins. This is a two star conversation, and as such is supposed to be imparting gameplay information. The only thing that happens if you make Jill fight Daein soldiers happens in the next mission (Chapter 20).
This one, though, is a very relevant gameplay tip depending on your playstyle. When Jill and Shiharam get close to one another and you're not prepared for it, bad things happen.
Other than that, though, there is no gameplay reason not to deploy Jill during the Daein arc.
Today's BEXP level ups. Both Tanith and Titania really want those Strength gains.
...Is that Devdan in the back?
Yeah, the Daein forces in this mission are relatively meagre. It's the Kilvas force we have to keep an eye on.
Speaking of, we just spotted it!
Yeah, uh, Naesala is... bad news.
A correct statement. For us, though, a fairly meaningless one.
If only we had someone who (used to) be friends with Naesala...
Sure, sure.
This is a Defeat Boss map, where the goal is to defeat Homasa. The Armies represented here are the Kilvas and the Daeins respectively, and their distinction is important.
Homasa looks like this. He can be fast enough to be annoying to hit, and he can hit you painfully no matter what your defensive stat of choice is. Don't forget about that chance to either crit you or hit you twice. I think you can't Steal on a speed tie, so you can't actually take way that second Sonic Sword for yourself- Thieves cap at 20.
And here's the Raven King Naesala himself. Give this guy a weapon and he'd be tearing through us like butter untransformed. Vortex is the Occult skill for Raven laguz, and it gives Naesala the ability to cast the Elwind spell, more or less. Oh yeah, about giving him a weapon...
One thing I notice here, particularly for the people familiar with how laguz- and specifically laguz kings- work in both this game and Radiant Dawn, is that Naesala is conforming to the laguz transformation mechanics in this appearance. Starting with 16 TP means he'll transform Turn 1, but if we really need him to, we can wait him out to 0.
As mentioned, there are Kilvas generics scattered about. In Normal Mode, they're all on pretty low TP and you can freely ignore them until Turn 4 or 5. If you're playing this map "correctly", you don't want to kill them.
Homasa is an edgy swordmaster.
Naesala just pities us.
There's another mention of that Worm again.
Yeha, that's Ike.
What else would we do in a Fire Emblem game?
What choice do we have about the ravens?
Do keep an eye open on this Killer Axe guy. Also, I think this is also the first appearance of that special terrain tile he's standing next to- that's a ballista, a terrain feature for both sides that can launch a high Might arrow (Effective on fliers) a great distance. Against non-fliers, though, it's usually not much of a concern. Only Archers and Snipers can use them- Astrid is a Paladin, so she can't. There is no way for us to use a Ballista in All Girls in either Tellius game.
Mia will bait the Killer Axe. Ilyana is standing in ballista range and does not care.
Tanith calls for reinforcements. They can take some ballista bolts too.
These ones in particular. I want to be going up this hill.
Jill makes sure not to stand in range of the ballista, but Marcia, who has the Full Guard, will not take Effective damage and doesn't care that much about it.
Naesala transforms. His range is now huge, but I can assure you Marcia is not currently inside it.
She's in this guy's range, though. Not that she cares about his weapon triangle advantage.
Also, this is a kinda cool frame of the pegasus dodge.
Mia deals with this guy and loots his Killer Axe.
Nephenee goes to take the myrmidons that come next.
Astrid shoots down this ballistician. We still want to be shot at less rather than more.
Pictured: Naesala's range. Told you it was big.
Here are his transformed stats. Yeah, I have no idea how one would go about killing him in All Girls and no real plan to.
This guy got weakened by something and Mist can exactly take him out.
Lethe blocks Mist from the myrmidons. Perhaps this was a mistake.
This Holy Guard got shot at by a ballista and lived. Don't underestimate these girls. They can also dodge them entirely.
Yeah, uh, all the myrmidons went to fight Lethe and not Nephenee.
Even this guy, but he was more justified in doing so, since he's holding a weapon Effective on her. (If she doesn't have the Beorcguard on.)
Lethe puts that Renewal skill to use and mostly brushes off the minor scratches she took from those encounters.
Titania is exactly killing an unpromoted enemy. Sol doesn't boost damage in this game, either, it just makes her harder to kill.
This guy is about to become our problem. When I played this map, I was under the impression that if you do what I'm doing, sparing ravens is still a good thing. No, I should've killed them for EXP.
Mist picked up A Swords here. And I don't think I even had her use the Sonic yet! That Arms Scroll was a waste, it seems...
Just casually setting up a line of all my highest move characters just outside Naesala's range. Look how far away Homasa looks...
Jill crushes this ballistician.
Tanith doesn't quite find the range shadow and pays the price. I always forget Tellius ballistae can shoot one tile "back".
Mia went unarmed so this raven could live.
These ravens have noticed the corner I stuck Ike. Yeah, we should probably finish this turn.
So much for Mist having the highest Move.
Lethe can get inside the range, though.
Oh yeah, one other thing about Naesala: In PoR, laguz royals are immune to crits.
Tanith takes offence to this guy who severely wounded her.
I had Lethe Shove Mist to show off what she could do to the Raven King. If I wanted to abuse savestates, I probably could have killed Naesala with this, Astrid, and some well placed hits. But... 36% accuracy.
Crits and Adept mean nothing if you're doing 0 damage.
...Also your sword is Wind.
Homasa actually has some prideful things to say to your various sword users. Unfortunately for this playthrough, Mia is not one of them.
Homasa: It seems you’re quite a fencer. Shall I teach you something?
Stefan: Sheathe your blade. If that’s all the skill you possess, you’re not ready to challenge me.
Homasa: What? Have at you!
Stefan is awesome, though.
Homasa: Your fighting style is…unique. It is rough and awkward, yet terribly strong. Who was your teacher?
Ike: My father.
Homasa: Really? Then we are the same. My father taught me to wield a sword as well. Neither of us can afford to lose.
Homasa's father, getting the barest minimum development.
That's not true... there's still one Fighter up on the hill!
Naesala loses interest in fighting us without Homasa. The game considers another outcome "canon", so we won't be worried about fighting Naesala again.
I mean... you can use snakeskin for stuff...
Good point. In Jugdral, a life is worth 30,000G.
So long, and thanks for the scare.
I call it "not being in range of Naesala" that really saved our hide.
Ooh, a building.
One thing that I somehow legitimately never thought of before this playthrough: this must be how the Daeins were planning on paying Naesala.
Daein has been throwing a lot of money at this war, admittedly. A lot of the soldiers are also enjoying fat pay packets.
...Treasure! Treasure! Money! Money! Money!
Fifty thousand gold, that seems familiar...
And Ike doesn't mention what he's doing with it. That's always a bad sign.
Titania's happy to let him keep his secrets though.
This is Elincia's request. How much money she feels is appropriate for the mercenary's work is a little unclear, but apparently "this much" is included.
Ike only really cares about the fifty thousand, though.
Titania tells him he can keep the fifty thousand for his own needs. Titania trusts him.
Yeah, at the start of the next mission, we'll see the figure on our income report from Soren.
The Daeins are so scared, it's almost funny.
Petrine is... more racist than usual for Daein. She has her reasons.
And that someone will probably be the next five Daeins who get too close to her lance.
Even if Naesala wanted to rejoin Daein and hassle us again, I doubt Daein would welcome him. Well, Petrine wouldn't. The other Daein generals, though...
Ashnard alone could probably do the trick. Not that Petrine could join in without a winged mount.
Petrine is about as mad as the Mad King, and being in her presence for too long is dangerous no matter what colour you wear.
Petrine is also on thin ice with Ashnard, what with us having pulled the wool over her eyes so many times, so she needs to find the right plan to beat us...
Oh hey, that's where I remembered that fifty thousand sum from.
We're finally ponying up.
Volke's payment system is "whatever number he's thinking of right now", rather than based on a proper economy. He genuinely doesn't care how much Ike has given him other than "the bag is about heavy enough for fifty thousand gold."
So let's hear what Greil wanted from our "...intelligence" officer.
...Gesundheit?
...Honestly, I wonder if our Ike could stab Volke and get his money back, or his poor stats make him no match.
Ike isn't particularly pleased to hear this.
...This is sort of an exact wording, but in practice, I'm not really sure what the difference is between this and a report.
Volke was always planning on telling Ike in the end. This is too important to do otherwise.
Good question.
Mediocre answer. Volke does as Volke does best. Probably best we didn't go over this when Ike and Volke first bumped into each other, though.
Also, Volke hasn't been taking a ton of jobs, focusing on this one important one. As we learn in Volke's sole Support later, Volke doesn't like multitasking.
What, and what?
Well, Greil has been slain by Daein. Seems to fit the criteria.
Berserk in Fire Emblem has traditionally been a status ailment that caused a unit to attack indiscriminately for five turns. Tellius doesn't have the status ailment, but it does have this, which is also a capital B Berserk.
Why would it be necessary?
Now that's an important thing.
And yep. Mist has been carrying around something you use capital letters for.
A nice bronze memento that glows with a vivid blue flame, you know, what most people get from their dead parents.
Greil didn't tell Volke his version of the medallion's purpose, just the common understanding.
Here's the CG we get to see of Mist holding the medallion. Just a CG, they didn't use the cutscene a third time.
I'm really not sure what this medallion was for before it became Lehran's Medallion, Artefact of Great Peril. Considering it's bronze, it could be a third place in some sporting competition for all we know.
This is a very vague, only somewhat true statement of fact. Radiant Dawn Part 4 goes into great detail deconstructing who these characters are and what they did.
Ike, upon being told his sister sings a lullaby to an evil god every night, wonders what cursed timeline he has entered.
They do answer that question satisfyingly later, but Volke wasn't lucky enough to track down that story.
Greil himself was either a bonus kill to them or someone they could let live if not for this. Not that Greil would ever give this up.
In the grander scheme of "what the medallion does", there aren't that many reasons to possess it. Nevertheless, it's a very coveted item by certain parties.
Let's give this doomsday trinket to an (at the time) four year old girl. That sounds logical.
Well, only beorc who can. Herons can do it too.
If this was truly just an ordinary trinket, surely Ike would've touched it once.
But Greil thought of that.
In the Japanese version, Greil is described as "ひどく殴られて"- giving Ike harsh physical punishment in response. Greil means business when he says "this is Mist's and Mist's alone."
This is a bit of a mistranslation, or at the very least an inconsistent translation with Radiant Dawn. The force that is extremely strong within Mist is "正", and Radiant Dawn calls this "Order". It is incredibly important that I go over this, because "balance" is a very misleading word in the greater context of this topic.
What exactly makes Elena and Mist so powerfully attuned to Order goes unexplained. Perhaps it's natural, perhaps it relates to the circumstances in which Greil acquired the Medallion to begin with.
I think this line is another casualty of the translators not really understanding Radiant Dawn's version of "正" and "負" and how they apply here. What Volke is talking about is that the Medallion will take the "負" from a person and magnify it. Radiant Dawn would translate "負" as "Chaos". Elena and Mist, since they are so full of "Order", have no "Chaos" to magnify.
Greil, on the other hand, has lots of Chaos. Chaos energy is associated heavily with war, so strong military men like the legendary General Gawain have lots of Chaos.
Here the translators did manage to slip in reference to "Chaos", but by comparing it to "balance", they muddled the messaging of the nature of Order and Chaos. When Volke says "balance" here, he means "Order."
Incidentally, before we move on from this, I want to specify: this mistake is very definitely not the translator's fault. The words "正" and "負" are not, in fact, invented for Tellius, but are real Japanese words with real meanings- Positive and Negative, respectively. They are used in ordinary conversation, including a few instances in this very chapter that are not supposed to be taken as "Order" and "Chaos". Unless the translators were given the exposition dump about the nature of "正" and "負" from Radiant Dawn (which I doubt), this was a reasonable mistake to make. Even a native Japanese speaker might not have realised the problem.
Chaos energy can be quite... intoxicating, in high doses.
This is a powerful image to follow that last thought.
General Gawain is legendary. It's a genuine question where his power level sits amongst the greats of today: Ashnard, the Black Knight, Caineghis, Tibarn and the dragons.
In Fire Emblem terms, "counter kills twenty enemies" is a very mechanically easy thing to do- Mia, Ilyana, Marcia, Nephenee and especially Jill could probably do it- but the narrative still respects the sort of skill you'd need to pull that off in real life.
Gawain was so taken with the chaotic energy of the medallion that he could no longer tell friend from foe. All he could do was continue attacking.
...
...Yeah.
It stings.
It would be very difficult for anyone else to have done this. Elena's relatively rare attunement to Order means she can keep her own sanity on the way back. Most people trying to pull this trick off are only going to make the situation worse, especially if they have their own swords.
Unfortunately, saving Greil came at the cost of her own life. The power of the medallion cannot be underestimated. There's a reason Greil was quite severe in dealing with Ike getting too close to the medallion that one time.
I wonder what the circumstances were for Greil touching the medallion. Maybe the assassins got too close while Elena and the medallion were separated?
Ike isn't aware of this. If you're wondering what part of the timeline this fits in, this incident happened in Gallia (and is implied to have been Greil's impetus to move to Crimea).
If anything, Gawain being the man he was probably made things worse.
Ike touching the medallion and becoming consumed by madness was realised in Fire Emblem Cipher, before eventually becoming even more fleshed out with FEH's Fallen Hero Ike: Zeal Unleashed.
I wonder how one finds out about the Fireman.
All three of these were incredibly important criteria.
Volke said no, though.
This is how strong Gawain was at the height of his power: He went to an assassin with a request to kill him, and the assassin said "there's no way I could do that." To be fair, most assassins have the luxury of waiting until their targets are asleep.
Greil did find a way to sweeten the deal.
That would help. Greil as he stood today is not, and could never be, the Gawain of legend.
...So about that duel with the Black Knight he threw...
Greil with a crippled right hand: still the equivalent of an incredibly powerful endgame character. Just, like, "Marcia strong" and not "Black Knight strong".
Again, Volke has a few holes we can fill in later, but more or less everything we need to know is there.
Ike must now take this responsibility to heart.
Ike wonders what Greil was thinking with his last words.
More or less sound advice, especially with the Black Knight killing you and coming close to killing your son fresh in your mind. But with the medallion hanging over their heads, Ike and Mist would never have gotten peace if they had tried to take it.
We have no choice but to.
This is something you get if Volke isn't dead. If he is dead, he stays alive plot-wise long enough to talk about this.
Sorry, I'm just imagining Ike with his current stats going berserk.
Yeah, uh, I don't think we had to worry about it before, sir.
Yeah, Volke really doesn't care about good economy practice.
I choose to refuse on this playthrough, mainly because the condition made it feel right. Also, there's a bit of an old rumour I want to debunk for sure.
If you're not using Volke for his stats, this changes literally nothing. We don't even use Volke for stealing- Sothe doesn't charge us. Even if you don't plan on making Volke a combat unit, though, he does have use for his Strength and Speed for stealing from enemy pockets, so don't turn this down yourself.
This line has its own dedicated cutscene, for some reason. I think it's got something to do with the fact that the immediately preceding scene has roughly three different variations based on whether you hired Volke and whether he is still alive, but it almost seems like a waste to include it at all.
Full turn bonus, and... wait, where's my bonus for sparing the raven laguz's lives? Rereads sentence I swear I'm a good person.
In the next chapter: We reach the conclusion of the Jill arc.
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